The One Dorset Pathology Network has partnered up with Fujifilm Digital Pathology Solutions with the aim to create a fully digital workflow for cellular pathology across its sites.

The partnership will see a year-long pilot being carried out at Royal Bournemouth Hospital. This will include installing a high capacity scanner at the Bournemouth hub laboratory, a low capacity scanner at the Dorset County site, workstations for all the pathologists, as well as AI, macro-imagers and voice recognition software.

It is hoped that this will extend to a wider installation and see a fully digital workflow being created for cellular pathology across the Network’s sites in Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset County.

Ashley Ballard, senior biomedical scientist at Royal Bournemouth Hospital, said: “It is rare in histology that an opportunity comes up to truly re-shape the service.

“But with the introduction of digital pathology and our partnership with Fujifilm we have the chance to radically change how things work for the future.

The One Dorset partnership is the first of Fujifilm’s direct awards from the recent PathLAKE digital pathology initiative.  PathLAKE is one of a network of five new Centres of Excellence in digital pathology and medical imaging, and has been supported by a £50m investment from the Data to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine strand of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, managed and delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Emma Hodgkinson, medical informatics sales at Fujifilm UK, added: “We are excited to be partnering with the One Dorset Pathology Network as they embark on their digitisation journey.

“With our open platform approach, Fujifilm has combined our experience of implementation and support of medical diagnostic solutions across enterprise-wide programmes with modern digital pathology software and hardware from experienced, innovative providers.”